you may recall that in the summer of 2011, we nearly went over the fiscal cliff by not paying our debts. that caused our bonds to be downgraded because we had an element within the republican conference that was willing to take us to the cliff and hold us hostage. when you look back and see historically that the debt ceiling was raised 17 times, under ronald reagan and eight times under george h. w. bush canada seven times under bill clinton and six times under george w. bush, really it is honoring the full faith and credit of the u.s. government. , iaching that to a debt understand ideologically why people might want to do that, but why would you take the nation to this process? there was a passage of a special select committee. that select committee, if it did not respond with further cuts and tax increases, would seek a so-called sequestration comoe spending domestic and military spending. already in congress we obscene that while the cuts have been made on the military side, some would say there's more to come and on the domestic side and others would argue there's more to come ther